Guy Spencer was very perturbed. He rose and walked up and down the room—it was his habit to walk about, even in confined spaces, when he was in an emotional mood.
At length he turned, and faced her squarely. "Look here, Miss Keane. It's rather nonsense talking about being a waitress or a shop-girl. You told me you had a small income saved from the wreck. How much is it? I am asking in no spirit of impertinent curiosity. I have a reason for asking."
She hesitated for a moment before she replied: "Something like a hundred a year—paid to me quarterly by my cousin, Mr. Dutton, who is my trustee."
"Then you are not exactly a pauper. Shopgirls and waitresses don't earn that."
"But it would help," said Miss Keane, in a stifled voice. "A hundred a year does not go far; with clothes and everything."
He longed to take her in his arms there and then and ask her to be his wife, so far was he subjugated by her subtle fascination. But certain things occurred to him. He thought of his old ancestry, his uncle whose heir he would be, even a faint idea of his cousin Nina flashed through his mind. What would his relatives say to a marriage like that, the marriage with a girl, however beautiful, picked up in a flat, owned by a woman of good family but doubtful reputation?
But he could not afford to lose her. He was rich, he could indulge any passing whim. Out of his new-born ideas he spoke.
"Miss Keane, I am very interested in you. Will you agree to look upon me as a friend?"
She looked up at him from under downcast eyes.
"Mr. Spencer, somehow I have always looked upon you as a friend, as something different from the ordinary man I meet in a place like this."